11 ms·

I was seriously considering adding Linux support for my game, that already has turn-based multiplayer, and this thread was the last thing I needed to convince m

by ldd 6y ago

I was seriously considering adding Linux support for my game, that already has turn-based multiplayer, and this thread was the last thing I needed to convince myself it could work. Performance may be an issue. I wonder if people would be ok with electron games sold on steam running on linux...

aclelland 6y ago
One of the games I run the infrastructure from had an issue with Proton. It caused issues with the multiplayer parts of the game. We were forced to disable support for Proton a few months ago. We posted a bug in the Proton GitHub repo and got a great response from the Devs. The issue was resolved in the very next patch and we were able to enable Proton support again. Other than that issue our players very rarely come to us with Proton specific issues.
devwastaken 6y ago
Discord and spotify are both electron on Linux, so I would imagine it would work.
- gitweb 6y ago
  Spotify used to be Qt, has it changed?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - tim-- 6y ago
    Yes, yes it has. The UI is still quite good, and doesn't seem to have the downsides that many Electron apps have, except for the amount of memory used by it (still much less than Slack or Skype)
- Zardoz84 6y ago
  One of the selling points of Electron was making easy to port apps between platforms.
aaomidi 6y ago
Thank you! At the very least please try to make it work with proton :)
p1necone 6y ago
Normally electron apps bother me on linux because they don't use my carefully selected GTK/QT/Openbox theming like most native apps do (whereas on windows I don't care because I don't have the ability to make anything look how I want). But I expect games to be fullscreen and have their own bespoke UI look and feel anyway, so it's not really an issue with them.
- OJFord 6y ago
  Do you have consistency between GTK/Qt, or only within each? I've never really bothered to set it up (just installed some theme I pulled a name from Arch wiki for, so buttons look like they're from this century) because I assumed I could go to a load of effort and still notice which is used for each program I use. And then find myself caring which I install if I have the option, or not wanting to if it's only available in the wrong one.. whereas I'm presently free of that.
  - p1necone 6y ago
    You can set up QT to use GTK themes (seems like this is the default in KDE Plasma): https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Uniform_look_for_Qt_and_GTK_applications https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Uniform_look_for_Qt_and... I currently just don't have any QT based apps on my Arch system though I don't think.
    - OJFord 6y ago
      Ah, thanks, I think it's adwaita (mentioned there) that I picked at (pseudo)random, so maybe I already have it. Not sure if I have any either to be honest, but that's what I mean, I like not worrying about it.
      - p1necone 6y ago
        I'm a big fan of the Arc theme.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
gitweb 6y ago
If it can run in Electron, why not just make it a PWA?
viraptor 6y ago
Not sure if you've seen crosscode, but they released on steam and other platforms with impactjs and they're doing very well. (Not quite electron, but still html tech) If it runs well, who cares about the tech :-) People seem to complain about electron in tools and background apps. If it's the main/fullscreen app, it shouldn't be a problem.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  Never in my life would I have expected crosscode to be anything like HTML/JS based. That’s one of the most fluent games I’ve played.
  - novok 6y ago
    It took a lot of work to make it performant on something like a switch. In the end I'm not sure if it's quite HTML/JS based anymore. I can't find the tech talk video where the porting guy goes into all his work to make it work on a switch. Save yourself some hassle, just make your game with gamemaker, UE4 or unity if you have any ambitions of going cross platform in the vague future unless it's really simple point and click slow paced strategy games, a dating sim / story game or similar.
    - KapKap55 6y ago
      It runs on top of a multimedia library called Kha while running on consoles (https://github.com/Kode/Kha https://github.com/Kode/Kha). Here's the talk you're (probably) talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfBzlzvt8RU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfBzlzvt8RU
  - jcelerier 6y ago
    Eh, I loved it but for a 2D game I had an awful lot of slowdowns on my gaming laptop (https://www.newegg.com/matte-black-with-gold-diamond-cut-msi-gs-series-gs65-stealth-thin-053-gaming-entertainment/p/N82E16834154804 https://www.newegg.com/matte-black-with-gold-diamond-cut-msi...)
- pseudalopex 6y ago
thesquidofgol 6y ago
Go for it. Others already do that use Electron. Shapez.io is one such title and it's open source too so you can get some pointers if needed from it.
- justinclift 6y ago
  Haven't heard of Shapez.io before, so went to try it out. Going to Shapez.io though gives a Cloudflare error: "Error 521: Web server is down". :( Trying the Wayback Machine, there's "something" on there but it doesn't seem to work. (?) eg: http://web.archive.org/web/20201120204614/https://shapez.io/ http://web.archive.org/web/20201120204614/https://shapez.io/
  - thesquidofgol 6y ago
    Just checked, https://shapez.io/ https://shapez.io/ works fine here. There's the GitHub too: https://github.com/tobspr/shapez.io https://github.com/tobspr/shapez.io
Zardoz84 6y ago
you will have the same bad performance of electron on Windows, Linux and OSX.
unixhero 6y ago
Linux gamer here. I spend a lot of money on the steam store.
- lowdose 6y ago
  Now you have to tell us how much money so we have an idea what unixhero boldly confesses on a forum where the A+ players hangout.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
refracture 6y ago
We always appreciate the effort.
ekianjo 6y ago
Performance is not an issue.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  Some games seem to report measurably better performance on Linux, even. I imagine outside the steady-state, loading times could be a boon for Linux given that Linux filesystems are "faster"
  - formerly_proven 6y ago
    Almost all games use their own VFS layer which heavily lean toward "few huge files with a lookup table" to work around NTFS' deficiencies. They used to be often chunked into 2 GB files, but since a few years developers stopped doing that. Some games even ship all their assets in a single file.
    - lucian1900 6y ago
      Historically they do that because of consoles, not NTFS.
Google234 6y ago
Get ready for 2% of your player base to make 50% of the support requests.
- paulcarroty 6y ago
  Plan B worth it, Valve invest his resources not just for fun.
ldd 6y ago
very weird to have this as my most upvoted post, but eh. If there is a time to shill out, it's now: A game inspired by Nuzlocke Challenges + Slay the Spire discord: http://discord.gg/u64Mg4X http://discord.gg/u64Mg4X twitter: https://twitter.com/_ldd https://twitter.com/_ldd mailing list: tiny.cc/dxx5tz

by ldd 6y ago

aclelland 6y ago

One of the games I run the infrastructure from had an issue with Proton. It caused issues with the multiplayer parts of the game. We were forced to disable support for Proton a few months ago. We posted a bug in the Proton GitHub repo and got a great response from the Devs. The issue was resolved in the very next patch and we were able to enable Proton support again. Other than that issue our players very rarely come to us with Proton specific issues.

devwastaken 6y ago

Discord and spotify are both electron on Linux, so I would imagine it would work.

gitweb 6y ago
Spotify used to be Qt, has it changed?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tim-- 6y ago
  Yes, yes it has. The UI is still quite good, and doesn't seem to have the downsides that many Electron apps have, except for the amount of memory used by it (still much less than Slack or Skype)
Zardoz84 6y ago
One of the selling points of Electron was making easy to port apps between platforms.

aaomidi 6y ago

Thank you! At the very least please try to make it work with proton :)

p1necone 6y ago

Normally electron apps bother me on linux because they don't use my carefully selected GTK/QT/Openbox theming like most native apps do (whereas on windows I don't care because I don't have the ability to make anything look how I want). But I expect games to be fullscreen and have their own bespoke UI look and feel anyway, so it's not really an issue with them.

OJFord 6y ago
Do you have consistency between GTK/Qt, or only within each? I've never really bothered to set it up (just installed some theme I pulled a name from Arch wiki for, so buttons look like they're from this century) because I assumed I could go to a load of effort and still notice which is used for each program I use. And then find myself caring which I install if I have the option, or not wanting to if it's only available in the wrong one.. whereas I'm presently free of that.
- p1necone 6y ago
  You can set up QT to use GTK themes (seems like this is the default in KDE Plasma): https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Uniform_look_for_Qt_and_GTK_applications https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Uniform_look_for_Qt_and... I currently just don't have any QT based apps on my Arch system though I don't think.
  - OJFord 6y ago
    Ah, thanks, I think it's adwaita (mentioned there) that I picked at (pseudo)random, so maybe I already have it. Not sure if I have any either to be honest, but that's what I mean, I like not worrying about it.
    - p1necone 6y ago
      I'm a big fan of the Arc theme.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago

gitweb 6y ago

If it can run in Electron, why not just make it a PWA?

viraptor 6y ago

Not sure if you've seen crosscode, but they released on steam and other platforms with impactjs and they're doing very well. (Not quite electron, but still html tech) If it runs well, who cares about the tech :-) People seem to complain about electron in tools and background apps. If it's the main/fullscreen app, it shouldn't be a problem.

Aeolun 6y ago
Never in my life would I have expected crosscode to be anything like HTML/JS based. That’s one of the most fluent games I’ve played.
- novok 6y ago
  It took a lot of work to make it performant on something like a switch. In the end I'm not sure if it's quite HTML/JS based anymore. I can't find the tech talk video where the porting guy goes into all his work to make it work on a switch. Save yourself some hassle, just make your game with gamemaker, UE4 or unity if you have any ambitions of going cross platform in the vague future unless it's really simple point and click slow paced strategy games, a dating sim / story game or similar.
  - KapKap55 6y ago
    It runs on top of a multimedia library called Kha while running on consoles (https://github.com/Kode/Kha https://github.com/Kode/Kha). Here's the talk you're (probably) talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfBzlzvt8RU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfBzlzvt8RU
- jcelerier 6y ago
  Eh, I loved it but for a 2D game I had an awful lot of slowdowns on my gaming laptop (https://www.newegg.com/matte-black-with-gold-diamond-cut-msi-gs-series-gs65-stealth-thin-053-gaming-entertainment/p/N82E16834154804 https://www.newegg.com/matte-black-with-gold-diamond-cut-msi...)
pseudalopex 6y ago

thesquidofgol 6y ago

Go for it. Others already do that use Electron. Shapez.io is one such title and it's open source too so you can get some pointers if needed from it.

justinclift 6y ago
Haven't heard of Shapez.io before, so went to try it out. Going to Shapez.io though gives a Cloudflare error: "Error 521: Web server is down". :( Trying the Wayback Machine, there's "something" on there but it doesn't seem to work. (?) eg: http://web.archive.org/web/20201120204614/https://shapez.io/ http://web.archive.org/web/20201120204614/https://shapez.io/
- thesquidofgol 6y ago
  Just checked, https://shapez.io/ https://shapez.io/ works fine here. There's the GitHub too: https://github.com/tobspr/shapez.io https://github.com/tobspr/shapez.io

Zardoz84 6y ago

you will have the same bad performance of electron on Windows, Linux and OSX.

unixhero 6y ago

Linux gamer here. I spend a lot of money on the steam store.

lowdose 6y ago
Now you have to tell us how much money so we have an idea what unixhero boldly confesses on a forum where the A+ players hangout.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

refracture 6y ago

We always appreciate the effort.

ekianjo 6y ago

Performance is not an issue.

mhh__ 6y ago
Some games seem to report measurably better performance on Linux, even. I imagine outside the steady-state, loading times could be a boon for Linux given that Linux filesystems are "faster"
- formerly_proven 6y ago
  Almost all games use their own VFS layer which heavily lean toward "few huge files with a lookup table" to work around NTFS' deficiencies. They used to be often chunked into 2 GB files, but since a few years developers stopped doing that. Some games even ship all their assets in a single file.
  - lucian1900 6y ago
    Historically they do that because of consoles, not NTFS.

Google234 6y ago

Get ready for 2% of your player base to make 50% of the support requests.

paulcarroty 6y ago
Plan B worth it, Valve invest his resources not just for fun.

ldd 6y ago

very weird to have this as my most upvoted post, but eh. If there is a time to shill out, it's now: A game inspired by Nuzlocke Challenges + Slay the Spire discord: http://discord.gg/u64Mg4X http://discord.gg/u64Mg4X twitter: https://twitter.com/_ldd https://twitter.com/_ldd mailing list: tiny.cc/dxx5tz